1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an optical touch panel apparatus, an optical sensing module, and an operation method thereof, in particular to such optical touch panel apparatus and operation method which execute gesture functions by means of plural touch control areas.
2. Description of Related Art
Touch screen apparatuses are a kind of interactive apparatuses for users to directly and intuitively operate application software on screen. There are various types of touch screen apparatuses, and one of which is the optical touch panel.
FIG. 1 shows a prior art optical touch panel system 1 which is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,782,328. As shown in FIG. 1, the optical touch panel system 1 comprises two sensors 11 for capturing the images of an object 13 on a touch control area 12. A processor 14 is coupled to the two sensors 11, and calculates the sensing paths 15 linking the object 13 with the two sensors 11 by analyzing the images outputted by the sensors 11. The processor 14 also calculates the coordinates of the position of the object 13 according to the sensing paths 15. This optical touch panel system 1 requires two sensors 11 and therefore its cost is high.
FIG. 2 shows another prior art optical touch panel system 2 disclosed by Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 201003477, counterpart U.S. Pat. No. 7,689,381 B2. The optical touch panel system 2 comprises a mirror 21, two light sources 22, an image sensor 23 and a processor 24. The mirror 21 and the two light sources 22 are located around a touch control area 28. The mirror 21 is used to reflect the object 25 to generate a mirror image 26 of the object 25. The image sensor 23 captures the image of the object 25 and the mirror image 26. The processor 24 analyzes the sensing paths 27 passing the image of the object 25 and the mirror image 26, and calculates the coordinates of the object 25 according to the two sensing paths 27. The optical touch panel system 2 only needs one image sensor 23, and thus the cost is reduced.
Even though both of the foregoing optical touch panel systems (1, 2) can recognize the track of the object (which may be a finger or a device) and executes a corresponding gesture function such as page changes, display rotation or pulling down a menu, the prior art systems only use a single touch control area, and hence the available patterns of the track (e.g. horizontal sliding, up-down sliding, and circling, etc.) are limited and their corresponding gesture functions are also limited. Such conventional systems cannot provide more touch control functions or more gesture functions to meet various requirements, so they are less flexible and useful.
In view of above, the present invention overcomes the foregoing drawbacks by providing an optical touch panel apparatus, an optical sensing module, and an operation method which execute gesture functions by means of plural touch control areas. Different gesture functions can be defined in association with different touch control areas, and even the same track pattern can be defined as different gesture functions for different touch control areas, such that the number of the gesture functions can be multiplied.